The Rural Life (2007)
“For all I knew, they might have been. Ever since I’ve lived in the East, I’ve wandered through a forest of gross generalization, able in summer to tell an oak from a maple and a pine from a birch, but unable to make any finer distinctions. Eucalyptus, manzanita, madrone, juniper, pinyon, even acacia—each of these western trees I recognize, but none of them grows native in the woods around me. What does grow here, I’ve been able to say rather grandly till now, are trees.
But I awoke recently with a deep taxonomic yearning, an urge to sort the trees in the forest by name. I’ve found, for instance, that on the east side of the house I live in there are two pignut hickories, enormous, stately trees. Beneath one of them grows a hemlock, a reminder that hemlock is highly tolerant of shade. Until this weekend I had never turned over a hemlock needle and noticed the two white lines that identify it. On the rocky slope north of the house, there are more hemlocks, and compatriot beeches too, el...egant, smooth-barked trees surrounded by their juniors, bearing tightly furled buds on the tips of their boughs.MoreLess
But I awoke recently with a deep taxonomic yearning, an urge to sort the trees in the forest by name. I’ve found, for instance, that on the east side of the house I live in there are two pignut hickories, enormous, stately trees. Beneath one of them grows a hemlock, a reminder that hemlock is highly tolerant of shade. Until this weekend I had never turned over a hemlock needle and noticed the two white lines that identify it. On the rocky slope north of the house, there are more hemlocks, and compatriot beeches too, el...egant, smooth-barked trees surrounded by their juniors, bearing tightly furled buds on the tips of their boughs.MoreLess
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